Johnny Winter - Live Bootleg Series Volume Three
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Johnny WinterEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
CD Release Date: 2008-07-29
Music Label: Friday Music
Soundtracks:
- Mojo Boogie
- Stranger Blues
- I Smell Trouble
- Boot Hill
- Stones In My Pathway
- Penitentiary Blues
- Highway 61 Revisited
Free Music Notes for Live Bootleg Series Volume Three
Free Music Review: Insert your own superlatives...
Hit: 5 Stars
Not a bootleg in the usual sense of the word, this album is of course an official release, produced by Johnny Winter himself. And guess what? In many ways the four "Bootleg" albums which have come out so far are better than any of Winter's previous live albums, and better than almost all of his studio albums as well. Nowhere else are the talents of Mr John Dawson Winter III so well displayed (except, perhaps, on the phenomenal, underexposed "White, Hot and Blue" album), and nowhere else can his prowess on the guitar be better appreciated.
This third volume in the series opens with a driving, eight-minute rendition of J.B. Lenoir's "Mojo Boogie", a study in blues n' boogie guitar, terrific vocals, and some gritty harmonica playing by bassist Jon Paris. And then comes a fiery "Stranger Blues", which everybody from Elmore James to Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee has had a crack at, all howling slide guitar and thundering drums. The slow, fifteen-minute "I Smell Trouble" opens with a 2 1/2-minute guitar intro (and a little bit of harmonica), and has two lenghty guitar solos in the middle, and guess what? It's not a minute too long. Rarely have I heard a guitarist soloing for so long without ever sounding repetitive or resorting to meaningless finger-tapping or other nonsense.
The fidelity on "Boot Hill" is a bit below par, but it's still a great, great performance...imagine a cross between Stevie Ray Vaughan and Elmore James, powerful drumming and a dominant display by Winter on the guitar.
Robert Johnson's "Stones in my Passway" (or did Johnson mean "Pathway"?) is just Winter playing slide on his acoustic National steel guitar. Perhaps the highlight of the album, if it makes sense at all to talk about highlights on a record which is more or less 54 minutes of highlights.
You may know "I'm Gonna Murder My Baby" from Robert Night Hawk's gritty performance of that song (titled "Cheating and Lying Blues", I believe) on the classic "Maxwell St" soundtrack...it's credited to blues and R&B guitarist Auburn "Pat" Hare, who didn't actually write it, but he did record it sometime in the mid-50s, and later, tragically, murdered his girlfriend and died in prison.
Johnny Winter does very well by Peter "Doctor" Clayton's classic tune, and then the album finally winds down with the only semi-disappointing track in sight, a slightly tuneless take on Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited". It's as if Winter tries to do something other than just cover the song note for note, but it would have been better if he had stuck closer to Dylan's original melody, like he does on the "Second Winter" album where he originally recorded it.
Still, that one number is far from enough to pull this wonderful blues record down to "only" four stars. This is some of the most impressive blues guitar playing you'll ever hear, and if you've never heard Johnny Winter live before, you may be surprised at how good he actually is!
I much prefer Johnny Winter at his bluesiest, so bonus for me that he has decided "not to play no rock n' roll", as Fred McDowell would have put it, on his latest tour. And this is pretty much a pure blues record as well, if you can overlook the presence of the aforementioned "Highway 61 Revisited"...a few rock n' roll numbers do show up on the "Bootleg" albums, but they are just that, few, and that's the way I like it. This is what Johnny Winter does best, and on this particular album he does it very, very well indeed.
Fans of Johnny Winter need this album. Hell, fans of electric blues guitar need this album.
Go, Johnny, go...!
Live Bootleg Series Volume Three Poster
Like any life-changing, chromosome-rearranging event, all guitar fans remember theirfirst time seeing Johnny Winter perform live. For me, the year was 1973, at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Johnny was then embarking on his Still Alive and Well comeback tour. Appearing onstage all in white, his platinum-white hair flowing down to his elbows and playing a blinding white Gibson Firebird V, Johnny beamed with the unbridled energy of a force from some distant galaxy. His performance a combination of earth-shattering guitar playing, searing vocals and wildly energetic stage presence--was nothing short of brilliant. He rocked the Garden so hard that night, the entire building shook in rhythm with the music. During the barn-burning boogie track Rock & Roll, I literally believed that the Garden was going to blast apart at the seams.
In the ensuing years, I have seen Johnny perform countless times in arenas, amphitheaters, 1200-seaters, sardine-canned packed clubs (such as NYC s legendary Lone Star Café), rehearsal studios, and even Johnny s own living room. Seeing and hearing Johnny Winter play live is an experience like no other, because, simply stated, no other guitar player has ever entwined raw power, pure emotion, conviction, and virtuosity more effectively than he has.
Live Bootleg Series: Vol. 3 opens with Mojo Boogie. Johnny leads off the tune with some unaccompanied virtuoso slide work, his guitar tuned to open D (one of his favorite tunings for slide), before the band kicks in for a blazing extended intro solo, with bassist Paris offering some double duty by coping Johnny s slide melodies note-for-note on harmonica.
The second cut, Stranger Blues, is a killer Elmore James boogaloo that Johnny rips apart with more slide work in open D. This is the type of hard-rockin blues Johnny first introduced to the world back in 1969 with his seminal release, The Progressive Blues Experiment.
On the third track, I Smell Trouble Johnny displays the kind of mind-blowing speed and virtuosity that he usually reserves for long workouts over slow blues, while Boot Hill is a hard-driving mid-tempo shuffle on which Johnny effortlessly combines slide guitar with some of the fastest single-note work he s ever recorded.
Next up is a very rare live take of Robert Johnson s Stones in My Pass Way, played in front of a small but appreciative audience. Johnny performs the song unaccompanied with a slide on a National steel guitar tuned to open G. I learned about open tunings from listening to Robert Johnson's King of the Delta Blues, Johnny told me back in 1989. I picked up the concept of using open tunings just by using my own ears, and when I discovered how the open tunings worked with the slide, it was quite a revelation.
I m Gonna Murder My Baby, was written by one of Johnny s big guitar influences, Pat Hare. Says Johnny, I m Gonna Murder My Baby is the heaviest blues song ever written!
This collection rounds out with a smoldering version of Johnny s most well known track, his slide guitar tour-de-force arrangement of Bob Dylan s Highway 61 Revisited. Johnny Winter is regarded as one of the greatest, most original and most influential slide guitarists ever, and this track offers ample testament to that fact.
Today, Johnny Winter is still touring steadily all over the globe, playing and singing as only he can and bringing audiences to their feet wherever he goes. Until the next time you get to see him perform live, Live Bootleg Vol. 3 will keep you covered.
--Andy
Produced by Johnny Winter from the original source tapes
Remastered by Joe Reagoso (Deep Purple/Boz Scaggs/Canned Heat) at Friday Music Studios
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